Filmed for French television, this adaptation of Henry James’ short story, titled “The Ghostly Rental,” was unfortunately not widely known. This is regrettable, as director Robert Enrico has recreated an intriguing story with a talented framing of a viscous atmosphere of semi-irrational mysticism filled with magnetism.
The manifestation of something frightening and inexplicable, crossed the brink of ordinary day life, is conveyed vaguely, restrained strokes on the classic black and white canons in a beautiful play of light shade and sounds with the charming long music of the organ. Cemetery mute stone tombstones and conversations about ghosts next to them; trembling candles in a pair of candelabras at a frightened pale person, hesitantly walking along the creaky floorboards and degrees; an abandoned gloomy facade of the house where the phantom lives, hiding in the darkness of windows; a story with a murder from past years; dangerous superstitions about the non-disclosure of the secret of the memory of the deceased - all this evokes an indescribable aura, brightening up a very curious plot.
Before us is a young student-theologians, who likes to wander alone in the district, in the warehouse of character, attracted to something mysterious, shrouded in a special sinister train. So once he meets a closed house, which is reputed to be the dwelling place of the ghost of a dead girl, he is no longer able to lead everyday life, striving (voluntarily or unwittingly) to delve into the alluring mystical story. In a series of gossip-hearsays, he learns about an elderly military man who has killed his daughter, who is now a ghost who has made a deal with him: he does not sell the house she inherited, and she regularly appears at a specified time to transfer a sum of money issued in coins strictly not younger than the date of her death. The unique story does not leave indifferent the student, only wanting to meet with the phantom, paying rent for housing.
Cinema is a leisurely narrative, where the viewer, hand in hand with the main character, is gradually drawn into a gamble, one day come into contact with the ghost, make sure where the truth is and where the fiction is. The picture perfectly tolerates the sensation that hovers in the air, when it is both curious, but also creepy, because what promises a meeting with a silhouette in black clothes with snow-white brushes at a face covered with a veil? . .
The cast gets used to their roles, making their aspirations credible, where, perhaps, the most memorable French actress-singer Marie Laforet (Marie Laforet), playing not so much on the screen, but harmoniously conveying two diverse roles from the mysterious statue of the restless soul, and the performer of musical numbers in an entertainment institution. The center hero of Stephane Fey (Stephane Fey) – a student, turned out to be a real example of a collective short-spoken enthusiastic introvert, exploring the proposed situation, so wrapped in lies, truth, rumor, beliefs that the thirst for knowledge will not be satisfied until the detective knot passes to its logical conclusion, perhaps too prosaic, but therefore interesting due to the exposure of two themes of the unreal and the present.
This is a story about a ghost, visually presented as a native of another world with all the necessary paraphernalia of the booming wind, night meetings in an abandoned house, wary gossip about its fate and appearance, but figuratively the theme of the phantom, as a symbol of an eternally restless soul, who did not find a place in the world between relatives and friends, also succeeded. After all, the dramatic line imperceptibly emerges forward closer to the middle, still keeping a successful mystical background, only gradually becoming the main one, depicting a detective on the basis of problems of fathers and children, sometimes giving birth to ghosts, but not afterlife shadows, but their unfulfilled hopes, wandering in the crypt from walls of resentment and misunderstanding.
From all this it follows that as an excellent mystical production with a dramatic filling and detective progress of affairs, the film succeeded in bringing a pleasant viewing of leisurely works in classical tones to all lovers of such a movie, capable of captivating in complex secrets.
8 out of 10